Every collection tells a story at Dartmouth’s long-running numismatics club
Founded in 1958, the Halifax Regional Coin Club remains a gathering place for people who see coins as more than currency.
On a warm June evening, dozens of people gather in the Dartmouth Seniors Service Centre on Ochterloney Street. Tables are pushed together to form a large circle in a conference room. Collector binders are spread across the tabletops, their plastic sleeves filled with coins, commemorative medals, and paper currency, all neatly organized by date.
Before the meeting officially begins, conversations fill the room as collectors compare pieces, swap stories, and negotiate trades. Some browse through bags of coins brought by fellow members, while others discuss rare dates, minting errors, and upcoming coin shows. Newcomers mingle with longtime collectors with decades of experience.
Together, they make up the Halifax Regional Coin Club, a group of collectors and enthusiasts of all kinds of numismatics, including Canadian decimal coins, RCM collector coins, bullion, tokens, woods, international coins, bank notes, and trade dollars.
“The first inaugural meeting was the Fourth of December, 1958,” said club president Jeff Wilson. “And by the end of January of the next year, they had 117 members.”
Nearly seven decades later, the club continues to meet monthly in Dartmouth, hosting auctions, presentations, educational events, and coin shows. Though gatherings aren’t as large as they were in past decades, the club remains a gathering place for people who share an interest in history, collecting, and community.
Wilson, who joined the club in 1983, said coin collecting has been a lifelong passion.
“I started when I was six years old,” he told the Post. “My mom started me off with one set of coins. And at that time, I didn’t know anything about collecting. It was just filling in the dates – get the coin and plug in the hole.”
That childhood hobby eventually grew into a collection that now fills three rooms of Wilson’s home.
“If you came over and you said you wanted to see my collection, you’d be there for eight hours,” he said with a laugh.
For many collectors, however, the appeal goes beyond the coins themselves.
“It’s the oldest hobby in the world,” Wilson said. “People have been collecting coins for thousands of years. So there’s an appeal, because by collecting coins, you learn history.”
Coins offer a tangible connection to the past, he explained, preserving the stories of monarchs, historical events, and changing eras in Canadian life.
While many members have spent decades collecting, the club is also attracting a new generation of enthusiasts.
That trend is being noticed beyond the club itself. At The Bullion Bank in Dartmouth, manager Kevin Day-Thorburn said interest in numismatics remains strong.
“It’s been bolstered by the rise in precious metals, because silver and gold are so high now. People are suddenly paying attention,” he told the Post.
He said media coverage of rising precious metal prices often encourages people to revisit old collections they may have inherited.
“Because they hear so much about the rise of gold, the rise of silver, and they think, Look, I’ve got silver,” Day-Thorburn said. “It piques that interest, right, kind of renews it.”
For Donald MacDougall, who joined in 2023, that spark came from both his own childhood collection, and a bag of unusual coins passed down from his father after retirement.
“A few years ago, he just gave me this whole bag that had been sitting in his filing cabinet for a while,” he said. “It was wonderful, because I got to sort everything.”
After buying some collecting supplies, MacDougall searched for like minds.
“And I just did a quick Google search and found that there was a club here in Halifax,” he said. “And so that’s when I joined.”
Like many collectors, he has developed a specific focus. His collection centres largely on Canadian circulation coins, with albums dedicated to filling every date and variety he can find.
Some discoveries have proven particularly memorable.
He recalls purchasing several proof-like coin sets from another collector and examining them closely under magnification.
“I found that one of them was a known error coin,” MacDougall said. “It turned that set from being worth $7 or $8 to being worth maybe $75.”
But he said the excitement isn’t always about the value.
“The real magic is now that I just have one of these weird variants.”
That sense of discovery is something many collectors share. Whether hunting for a rare date, an unusual minting error, or a piece of local history, there is always something new to learn.
“There are all kinds of different areas where you can collect in,” said Wilson. “There’s trade dollars. There’s tokens. There’s paper money.”
For some, collecting also becomes a social outlet.
As members arrive for the June meeting, conversations quickly shift from recent purchases to the upcoming Royal Canadian Numismatic Association’s annual convention in Winnipeg, historical trivia, and stories behind favourite pieces.
“There’s going to be maybe 35 or 40 people here tonight,” said MacDougall. “They’re people who are largely retired, and this is a big part of their social calendar every month.”
The club also reaches beyond its membership through public events. Earlier this year, members hosted an educational day at Alderney Gate Public Library, where visitors could examine coins, ask questions, and receive opinions on items from their own collections.
The club also hosts an annual coin show in October, bringing dealers and collectors together from across the region.
Events like the annual show often serve as an entry point for newcomers, giving people a chance to browse collections, ask questions, and learn more about the hobby from experienced collectors and dealers.
MacDougall said that accessibility is one reason coin collecting continues to attract interest.
“Coin collecting is funny because it is the sort of thing that anyone can start to do,” said MacDougall. “Just in your pocket change, if you have $10 in change, one or two of those coins is going to have a funny picture on it. And it’s really that easy to get into it.”
And once collectors begin looking closely, they often find themselves hooked.
“If you really get into it, you’ll never stop,” MacDougall said. “It’s not like you can finish ever. And so a thing that has a low barrier of entry like that, and a high depth of interest, it’s kind of cool.”
For the members of the Halifax Regional Coin Club, that’s part of the appeal. Every coin carries a story, every collection remains unfinished, and every monthly meeting offers another opportunity to share both.